


Tornado insurance

by Charles_Rockafellor



Series: Ouroboros [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ringworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charles_Rockafellor/pseuds/Charles_Rockafellor
Summary: In the “Icewall” RPG-setting, I describe a number of possible game-worlds and Larry Niven's Ringworld (GURPS did an amazing RPG job) is one of them. It wasn't specifically Ringworld that I'd had in mind when looking at Icewall, but rather a question of lost histories and fragments remembered by humanity in snippets; this detail was meant to parallel Lokāloka Mountain (and Aloka-varṣa beyond) as remembered in Hindu beliefs. This isn't a statement about any religion, it's a what-if in a game/story-setting that encompasses bits of different religions as incomplete fragments that are essentially factual histories – e.g.: Ásgarðr is a real place in Icewall and Earth has an Abrahamic dome.Here, I'm picturing a ringworld floating ten miles or so above The Ice, though different from canon; it includes Philip José Farmer's “Riverworld” and some aspects of John Varley's “Gaea trilogy”, and the tanpi are a nod to Barsoom.For an overview of the neighborhood surrounded by this ringworld, please see thelocal area Icewall map.𝑫𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝑳𝒊𝒌𝒆, 𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒆, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑺𝒖𝒃𝒔𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒃𝒆! ❤️
Series: Ouroboros [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925998
Collections: Icewall, Sci-fi





	Tornado insurance

The sky-disc to the right was the same impenetrable black as ever, with the distant Needle **1** threading away to nothing far away in the darkness; the sky-disc to the left displayed its usual beautiful twinkling stars and regions, pinwheeling far too slowly to note visibly, but providing a pleasant change over the course of the week. With half a million miles of land to either side, running almost six million miles in circumference that dwindled into the sky to either end, the universe was truly an amazing place, a sandwich of perfection shining with its own glory and carved from the void all around.

Lothar set his book down to admire the view as the simoom wafted gently across the landscape ahead of the sunsquare terminator line. Looking upward from the line, he could just make out the next island-world, perhaps forty thousand miles distant. A pretty blueish marble tone, streaked with clouds, fading into the night cycle. Pretty, yes, but he wouldn't want to live there. It was said that water likely covered seventy percent of its surface.

The Great Dark Spot would be coming into view in the sky behind him in a few more days, followed eventually by The Pearl floating in its cushion of dull white. **2**

While he'd been lost in contemplation, a dust devil had crept up on his book, losing his page. He'd register his claim against the weather bureau in a little while. The best of all possible worlds, save for these vexatious moments. It was too beautiful a day to be concerned over such things, but a few extra tanpi wouldn't go amiss.

**O ~~~ O**

**Author's Note:**

>  **1** The Needle: their name for Yggdrasil, detailed in the Icewall document and referred to in “Chasing waterfalls”.
> 
>  **2** The Great Dark Spot: their name for the region of the entropy engines mentioned in the Icewall document and referred to in “Swappers” ch. 4: “[Chasing waterfalls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24371953/chapters/58780777)”; The Pearl is the globular world-pond detailed in that same story.
> 
> For the “Icewall” RPG/story meta-setting .pdf, please see [my Google drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BG7P_sVezz8Dn5b8js_34yeAjSBhfN0v).


End file.
